Record Drought Hits New Zealand's North Island

A helicopter is seen with a monsoon bucket flying over drought strickened paddocks in Waiuku, New Zealand.

Sandra Mu/Getty Images

Gallery

AftertheDustSettles

View Caption+#1: Introduction

In arid regions around the world, dust and sand storms are common.
They typically whip up along large gust fronts and swirl into storm systems, wreaking havoc with air traffic, as well as with life on the ground.
Just such a storm roared across the Arabian Peninsula in early March 2009, blanketing cities across the region, including Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, pictured here.

Photo credit: Associated Press

View Caption+#2: Riyadh Dust Storm

March 3, 2009
Residents in Riyadh braved near-zero visibility as a massive dust storm swept through the region.

Photo credit: Associated Press

View Caption+#3: Arabian Peninsula

March 3, 2009
The effects of dust storms extend far beyond traffic headaches. As dust storms blow out to sea, they can be transported thousands of miles.

Photo credit: NERC Earth Observation Data Acq

View Caption+#4: Sahara Desert Plume

Dust blowing off the Sahara Desert each winter makes its way across the Atlantic Ocean.
Rich in iron, the dust is a vital nutrient that helps sustain marine ecosystems, but can also trigger toxic blooms of algae, like red tides, that kill fish and damage corals.
It takes less than two weeks for a dust plume to lift off in Africa, cross the Atlantic, and settle in the Caribbean, the United States, or South America.
Saharan dust also finds its way into the Mediterranean, including Italy and Greece, and sometimes as far north as England.

Photo credit: NASA

View Caption+#5: Hong Kong

Human activity constantly ramps up the amount of dusty material in the atmosphere.
Hong Kong is always caught smack in the middle of a massive pollution phenomenon scientists call the Giant Brown Cloud or the Asian Brown Cloud.
The health consequences of atmospheric brown clouds are severe.
A 2002 study estimated that 1.6 million people die prematurely as a result of inhaling air pollution. Most diseases related to air pollution attack the lungs, including asthma, respiratory infection, and lung cancers.

Photo credit: NASA

View Caption+#6: Borneo Fires

Haze from automobile combustion and biomass burning, like this huge smoke plume over the island Borneo in Southeast Asia (1997), can block out the sun for a short while, causing local cooling.
But aerosols in the atmosphere rival carbon dioxide as an agent of warming, exacerbating humanity's effect on climate.

Photo credit: NASA

View Caption+#7: Himalayan Haze

Massive development throughout Asia is mostly to blame for the smoggy blanket that now engulfs much of the region.
This monstrous cloud that formed in 2004 is actually pollution crowded up against the Himalaya Mountains in India and Nepal, and is spilling southeast into Bangladesh.

Photo credit: NASA

View Caption+#8: China Dust Storm

Residents of developed countries are not immune to the ill effects of the increasingly dust and smog-choked Asian skies.
Large upticks in water consumption, intensive farming practices and deforestation in China have led to more frequent dust storms, like this one in 2001 that swept aerosol particles into the Great Lakes region of the US, and even left a sprinkling in the Alps mountains in Europe.
by Discovery News' Michael O'Reilly

Guy added that while some rain was forecast this weekend, "we will need more than this to help prepare for the winter and set up for next spring".

On its website, the government said the drought had progressed rapidly and rainfall in March and April was critical as a lack of autumn rain would cause serious impacts on the next production season for farmers.

In an economic note out earlier this month, the ANZ banking group said its analysis suggested the current spate of dry weather was likely to significantly weigh on primary production and could wipe 0.5 percent off GDP by the end of the year.

"Water levels in our local rivers -- the source of our water supply -- are extremely low and dropping," the council said in a statement.

"A significant reduction in demand for water will extend the number of days that back-up storage will last, so it's important to save water now."

From Saturday, there will be a ban on all outdoor water use including hoses, sprinklers and irrigation systems in Wellington to ensure there is enough water for households, businesses and public services if the dry continues.

Extra restrictions may be needed if our water reserves continue to drop.

The council, which can impose fines for breaching the ban, said it will cease the daily irrigation of sports fields and gardens and is turning off fountains and water features across the city as much as possible.